As further proof of its leadership in mobile Liquid Crystal Display technology, Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas has introduced a new 4.3-inch amorphous silicon TFT-LCD (Thin Film Transistor Liquid Crystal Display) for next-generation mobile devices. The new digital landscape display (part number LQ043T3DX02) features a 16:9 aspect ratio, 480 x 272 pixel format, and is capable of displaying 16 million colors. Sharp will demonstrate this panel during the Society for Information Display International Symposium being held in Boston, at its booth, number 2019.

Sharp is offering this display module as a standard part to meet the growing needs of design engineers in North America developing new and emerging mobile products with audio/visual capabilities, such as gaming devices, portable media players and portable DVD players. These new multimedia devices demand a significantly wider range of colors, higher brightness, high contrast, and low power consumption in a landscape orientation. It is also an excellent choice for PDAs, GPS devices, instrumentation and portable medical equipment that require greater on-screen performance.

In the past, OEMs developing mobile A/V products were limited to portrait mode displays; this taxed the ARM microprocessor or DSP to rotate the images into a landscape orientation. The symmetrical viewing cone gives engineers the option of using the display in either landscape or portrait mode. The display comes with a standard TFT interface. Because it is backlit by seven LEDs, the color screen can be continuously dimmed, saving additional power for other functions.

Developed with proprietary Advanced Super View (ASV) technology, the display features a 160-degree (H) x 160-degree (V) viewing cone, so images can be viewed from any angle without color reversal. Its low-reflective black screen -- another great advantage of ASV technology -- yields higher contrast, good black level uniformity, and a high image quality. ASV technology results in superior display performance that allows the user the flexibility to view highly saturated, crisp graphics, video and still images in a wide range of ambient lighting conditions.

Market analyst firm, iSuppli, predicts that the market for mobile TFT-LCDs will grow to 530 million units in 2007. Sharp's new 4.3-inch landscape display joins a broad lineup of mobile displays, including a 3.6-inch digital landscape display, and positions Sharp to provide high-quality displays to this highly competitive market segment.

"Feature-rich mobile devices must be capable of displaying images in either portrait or landscape mode to accommodate the various uses of an application. Because of this, there is a growing need among portable product designers to incorporate high-quality displays with wide viewing cones and 16:9 aspect ratio into products," said Dave Hagan, Product Marketing Manager for the Display Business Unit at Sharp Microelectronics of the Americas. "As an industry leader in display technology, Sharp's new landscape display offers design engineers the optimum choice for superior performance and power efficiency in a standard-size module."

The display integrates with Sharp's line of BlueStreak(TM) Microcontrollers and System-on-Chip devices, and fits well within full system solutions from Sharp that also include Flash memory, imagers and optoelectronics.